a. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally pertains to imaging and more particularly to archiving and accessing land image data on a land website.
b. Description of the Background
An extensive amount of data has been collected from various sources such as satellites, land surveys, legal descriptions and other sources that provide detailed information relating to land. For example, maps provided by the Bureau of Land Management provide map data that indicates legal boundaries relating to land ownership. Satellite data provides imagery indicating land features, growth and vegetation, water sources and other geographical features. Infrared imagery has been used to careful study growth and vegetation features, for example. Topological information has been accumulated through radar satellites and topological surveys. Hence, there is a huge body of information relating to land and associated features such as rivers, roads, vector data and raster data.
Various imaging techniques have been used that combine various sources of data and allow a user to view images of these combined data sources. For example, 3-D images have been generated that combine political and physical characteristics with satellite imagery. Land can be viewed, using this technique, at an elevated angle such that the image depicts the various features relating to land. Further, growth and vegetation data can be added to such images from other data sources to provide a more enhanced view. As another example, BLM map data can be combined with satellite imagery data to indicate legal boundaries on the satellite imagery. Further, topological data can be used to provide shading on a two-dimensional image that provides imagery relating to topological features which is commonly referred to as 2.5-D images.
Although various imaging techniques have been used to combine various sources of land data, these imaging techniques have not been effectively used in identifying property boundaries and effectively generating various images of an identified piece of property that illustrates property boundaries and can be used and implemented in a simple and easy fashion for various purposes. Further, a central archive of data and images of a property of interest that is easily accessible by the Internet has not heretofore been available.
Hence, it would be desirable to provide a system that allows users to identify property and provide images and related data regarding that property in a simple and easy fashion that can be easily accessed archived and retrieved (both openly and via password) for various purposes.